My Take on eHows Binge and Purge

I like eHow. I used to browse the site before deciding to write for them. I like the community and the people in it. But, an evil thing took over the eHow staff. Binge and Purge syndrome has struck them. After who-knows-how-long of eHow taking any article you wrote (binge) they are now deleting the masses that don't meet their criteria (the purge)

I lost six (I think) of 41 articles. And frankly, I think that the algorithm needs a do-over because the only possible reason they could be out of spec would be the actionable steps. I wrote a series of Leadership articles. I thought that breaking down a complex subject into manageable steps would be good. Note to others: DON'T DO THAT!

The problem arises when they delete Leadership traits part 1 of 3 and Leadership traits part 2 of 3, but they leave number three. And, they linked an article of mine on performance evaluations to a really lousy editor article.

Essentially my complaints are that eHow made no effort to tell me which articles I lost. There was no opportunity to correct the problem since they didn't mention which articles or provide a time frame to avoid deletion. And, the redirection of my titles to sub par editor articles is really low. It might make sense in an SEO kind of way, but it still gets under my skin. Oh, and just FYI ,they have stated that rewriting the deleted articles is verboten.

So, I spent two days really pissed off. Now that I am no longer pissed off I am resolved to continue writing there. But I will be carefully considering what I write for them. After all I wasn't drafted into involuntary servitude and it is their site. When in Rome eh?

And if by chance you lost articles and had no backups, there is an awesome article by a young lady named Virgina that will get you squared away quickly.

I will also be transferring some of my earning articles to Infobarrel and Xomba after appropriate rewrites. Be careful if you do that. eHow and IB both have a TOS/Guidelines that require unique content. So, rewrites need to ensure you have two unique articles even if they tell the same story.

How are y'all doing?